


Perserverance

by CarnationGem (Akumeoi)



Series: Ciavran AUs [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 09:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11101581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/pseuds/CarnationGem
Summary: After the Warden's death, Zevran is visited in the Fade by a spirit who looks eerily like her.





	Perserverance

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know the Fade doesn't actually work like this. Whatever, it's an AU.

It was often in dreams that Zevran saw Ciara’s face. Normally, he dreamt of her death. The Archdemon would cry its terrible cry, Ciara would raise her terrible sword, blood would explode everywhere, and then she would be gone and he would wake up in a cold sweat. If he was lucky, he might dream of holding her, maybe even of their final night together. But those dreams were worse, because the temporary happiness they brought him was always replaced by an emptiness so profound it might as well have been a dragon’s maw. He had promised Ciara he would live, had sworn that he would fight back the Crows and leave a free life, but some days he had trouble remembering why he had made that vow. Most days, really.

But this dream was not like any of those. Instead of falling through the ground and waking up, he had fallen through the sky and into the Fade.

Zevran had seen the Fade once or twice before, and there could be no mistaking this place. Normal dreams didn’t feel so real, and he was in full possession of his senses - so it was easy to wonder at the giant floating chunks of rock, the giant spiders with glowing red eyes which scampered and scuttled and paid him no mind, and the steady green glow of the desolate sky.

He had woken up alone on the shores of a large, silvery expanse of ocean. Now he stirred and pulled himself into a sitting position. It was hard to explain, but Zevran felt strangely light and buoyant, as if the air here were different. Moving through it was hard because it felt as if he might fly away if he lifted either of his feet off the ground. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere he wanted to go.

 _When will I wake up from this?_ he wondered, standing up. Though he doubted anything in a dream could harm or kill him, his assassin’s instincts were too strong - he had to look around just to make sure there was no danger nearby. Patting his boot absently to make sure the knife he had concealed there had followed him into the dream (it had), he watched the giant spiders scurrying around in the distance. As they seemed to have no interest in him, he was about to sit down again to wait the dream out when he felt a prickling on the back of his neck - as if he were being watched.

He turned around, and there she was, standing beside a large floating rock. As perfect as the day he had met her. Ciara.

Zevran felt a familiar cocktail of painful emotions rise within him. Love. Regret. Pain. Bitterness. Anger. Sorrow. And because he was currently in the Fade, and he had a vague idea of how these things worked, a tiny sliver of hope worked its way into his mind. Could this be her ghost?

Slowly, he took a step towards her. She did not respond, gazing at him impassively as if he were a stranger. Even though he was only a little bit taller than she was, she had not abandoned her habit of tilting her chin up to look at him, like she did with anyone who was taller than her. _She does not remember me._

But still, the familiar mannerism made his heart ache with the desire to hold her and kiss her.

“Ciara?” he asked. She did not respond.

“Ciara?”

Ciara cocked her head and spoke. “Are you addressing me?”

“Yes, I am,” Zevran said. “Are you a ghost, my love?”

“My…” Ciara paused, and a distressed expression flitted across her face. A similar distress shot through Zevran’s body in response. “I see. You were important to Ciara.”

“I was,” Zevran said. “But I see now that you don’t know me. I am sorry to have bothered you. Good-bye.”

He turned away, half feeling the urge to throw himself into the sea and see if he would wake up. But before he had taken a step, Ciara spoke again.

“Wait,” she said.

_For what? My love is gone. I must live as I can until I have fulfilled my promise to her. Only then shall I rest._

“Wait.”

There was a sharp note of authority in her voice, and Zevran had never been able to resist that voice.

“Here I am,” he said, turning back to her.

“You’re giving up, aren’t you?” Ciara asked.

 _Giving up sounds good to me._ “I wish I were able to do so, believe me,” Zevran said.

“No, you’re already doing it. I can sense it.” Ciara folded her arms and frowned at him, her eyes accusing.

“I made a promise to you that I would not give up. And so, I will not. You need not worry on that score, my love,” Zevran said, though he couldn’t muster any real emotion to back the statement or the endearment.

Ciara paused. She looked as if she were about to argue with him - and Zevran was certain she would, because he had come to read her expressions as if their meaning were written on her forehead. But then, her expression changed. In the place of her argumentative scowl, a look of sly cleverness came over her face - one that worried Zevran more than any scowl could. Then it faded away to Ciara’s customary closed expression.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked. The kindness in her voice contrasted with the composedness of her face. Unsure which to believe, Zevran hesitated.

“You truly do not know,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m sorry. I don’t much know how emotions work, but I think if you made a promise not to give up and you are doing it anyway, the pain must be very bad,” Ciara said. “But maybe you can’t help it. Mortals usually can’t.”

It was then that Zevran realised what, exactly, he was talking too.

“You are a spirit,” he said dully. “She was everything to me, and you’re wearing her face like an Orlesian noble wears a mask with flowers on it. Would you have tried to possess her if she were still alive? Why are you doing this?”

“Like I said, I don’t understand emotions, so I don’t understand what you’re saying. But I know I’ve upset you more. I’m sorry, that was the opposite of my intention,” the spirit said. She did sound genuinely remorseful, but Zevran didn’t trust any of that. How could she throw around words like “upset” and “pain” when she claimed not to know them herself?

“Then what exactly was your intention? Hmm?”

“I don’t want to possess people, I just want to understand them,” the spirit said. “I saw this Ciara and I thought she was like all the other people. But she wasn’t. She was like me, but she was more than me, she was a better me. I want to be a better me too, so I wanted to be like her. I borrowed her appearance to remind myself to try to be like that. I don’t want to forget her.”

This explanation was confusing, but Zevran thought he understood. The spirit admired Ciara, so it wanted to look like her. Although half of him wanted to lie down by the shore again and not care about any of this, part of him… was genuinely curious. To him, Ciara was unique and ideal among women, but that was because he loved her. Why would she have caught the eye of a spirit?

“So… who are you, then?” he asked. His gaze roamed over the spirit, but he could find nothing unusual in her appearance - she was a perfect replica of Ciara, right down to the single earring glinting next to her cheek, nestled amongst her dark hair.

“I am Perseverance,” the spirit said, and smiled.

 _Perseverance,_ Zevran thought. _My Ciara, so that is why you were so strong. You had more perseverance than even a spirit of that very name._

“She had that, certainly,” he said.

“So you understand,” the spirit said, sounding almost excited.

“Yes.”

“That’s how I can tell that you don’t have any right now,” the spirit said. “You don’t feel like me, but she did. She was blindingly bright, but you’re a bit dingy. Is it the sadness?”

“Of course it is,” Zevran said, almost angrily. “I grow weary of this talk. You cannot help me, and talking about it will do me no good. Besides, I can barely stand to look at you.”

That was a lie. Zevran wanted to drink in Ciara’s face, her mannerisms, her gestures, her voice. But he knew that the longer he stayed here, the harder it would be to wake up. Besides, the words she was saying were too at odds with her real self, and it was making him feel wrong, as if this place weren’t already wrong enough.

“But I can help you,” the spirit said.

“Unless you can bring her back for me…”

The spirit shook her head. “No. But I am Perseverance, and that is something you need, no? Listen. She wouldn’t want you to give up, and you know that.”

“Telling me that will change nothing, do you hear me?” Zevran snapped. “I have nothing to live for, but I am living anyway! And I will continue to do so, whether you believe I am capable of it or not.”

He was about to stride off, when the spirit reached out and caught his arm.

And the spirit had gotten it exactly right, down to the finest detail - those fingers tightening on his skin were Ciara’s; he’d know them anywhere. Even should his eyes be gouged out and his ears fall off, he would recognise Ciara’s touch on any part of his body, and this was undeniably her touch. Zevran froze, his voice stuck in his throat.

“You are going to break me,” he choked out.

“But you can’t be broken any more than she could,” the spirit said urgently. “Because. She willed her strength to you.”

“What?”

The question was torn from Zevran’s lips more by bewildered desperation than curiosity.

“If she believed in you, then so will I, even if I can’t feel it. I’ll help you. I want to understand, so I’ll help you.”

Before Zevran could say anything else, the spirit reached up with her free hand and cupped his cheek. He raised his hand to hers, and she began to glow with a blinding light, but he couldn’t look away. Just as he thought he might go blind, everything went dark. The earth shifted under his feet, and then everything went sideways and he woke up.

When Zevran opened his eyes, his heart was the first thing to protest, as it did every morning. _I’m awake again. What must I face today?_

Something felt different. Zevran couldn’t put his finger on it.

_Was that dream real? Was I really in the Fade?_

But somehow, he felt, it had nothing to do with the dream. It had something to do with something that was still inside him now - or maybe it was outside of him, or all around.

Rolling out of his bedroll, Zevran crawled out of the tent. Outside, it was a peaceful autumn morning - rolling red and yellow hills greeted his vision, a bit of dew on the grass and the already fallen leaves. The answer was not in any of these things.

_She willed her strength to you._

Zevran had thought that the pinnacle of his strength had been when he worked for the Crows. But in truth, that was not so. The person who made him feel truly strong had been Ciara. When people died, their memories always lived on, which would be considered by most to be a curse. But perhaps it wasn’t.

Perhaps these memories - of a time when he was strong - could become a new kind of strength. No matter what, Zevran could always fall back on the love in his memory. Nothing could take it away from him, after all. Maybe that was what the spirit had meant by a gift of strength. A fixed point, a haven in time.

It was time to accept that gift and move on. To live in a way that Ciara would have wanted for him. Zevran didn’t know if he was capable of that. But something that had happened last night had given him the strength to try to live again, just one more time.


End file.
